Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley both died on April 5, one burning out, the other fading away

Cole Waterman covers crime and court news for The Bay City Times, but is also an avid music lover and fan of pop culture. A Bay City resident, Cole graduated from Valley Lutheran High School and earned his bachelor's degree in creative writing from Saginaw Valley State University.

BAY CITY, MI — Twenty years ago today, Kurt Cobain quoted a couplet from a Neil Young song as he scribbled some of the closing lines of his suicide note — “It’s better to burn out / Than to fade away.”

Perhaps this coda was an attempt to convey some reasoning on why he decided to end his life, but in hindsight, it’s proven even eerier due to its prescience in contrast with Cobain’s death and that of one of his contemporaries.

Odds are anyone reading this knows the basics, but let’s recap to be sure. Cobain on April 5, 1994, entered a living space above his Seattle garage, wrote his final letter, injected a sizable amount of heroin, then shot himself in the head with a Remington Model 11 .20-gauge shotgun. An electrician found his body three days later, the shotgun lying across the Nirvana frontman’s chest and his cigar box of heroin paraphernalia nearby.

At the time of his death, Nirvana was at the height of the band's popularity, their third LP “In Utero” having been released less than a year prior, debuting at the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200 album chart. Conversely, Cobain was at his most tortured, and for reasons that transcend understanding and warrant only acceptance, the songwriter believed suicide was his best option.

If Cobain wasn’t already destined for the upper echelons of rock royalty, the timing of his brutal demise cemented his place in those halls.

In line with Cobain’s unnerving aping of the Young lyric, Hendrix in a 1969 interview stated, “It’s funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life. You have to die before they think you are worth anything.”

Cobain’s death proved Hendrix’s point.

By dying when he did, Cobain prevented himself from aging into self-parody. He never lost his artistic integrity playing the county fair circuit with tweaked Nirvana lineups, and didn’t release embarrassing albums trying to replicate “Nevermind” or “In Utero” just to shift units to pay the bills. Cobain’s death made him a legend and prevented any chance of him slipping into cringe-inducing mediocrity.

Layne Staley

Compare that with the death of another grunge luminary, Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley. Coincidentally, April 5 is also the anniversary of Staley’s death, though the widespread media coverage chronicling Cobain’s legacy is, for the most part, not addressing Staley’s. Granted, Alice in Chains didn’t have the watershed popularity of Nirvana, their heavier sonic palate and darker content not as accessible, but Alice in Chains was one of the most influential and top-selling bands of their era.

Both Cobain and Staley were pioneers in a musical movement from the same city, both exorcised their demons through their serrated vocal cords, both influenced untold bands who followed them, and both died on April 5 in Seattle. Staley, however, died in 2002, six years after his last album was released and three years after he recorded his last two songs with Alice in Chains.

The parallel deaths of Cobain and Staley invite analysis, and both are expressions of different kinds of social and personal angst.

The former ended his life decisively, in a violent flash. The latter became a recluse, retreating to his condo where he lost himself in a web of heroin dependency until his frail body gave out with a last overdose. That his body lay on his couch, a TV set flickering before him, for two weeks before police broke down his door makes the depths to which Staley sank that much clearer.

So while Cobain remains an icon, Staley is largely regarded as a fringe figure outside of fan circles. To be succinct, Cobain did indeed burn out, while Staley faded away.

Interestingly, and worthy of mention, Nirvana was not the first Seattle band expected to break the scene beyond the Pacific Northwest. Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were both signed to major labels and had releases on them before Nirvana, and Pearl Jam’s “Ten” was released a month prior to “Nevermind.”

Even before that, the band Mother Love Bone was projected to make it big, their brand of Guns N’ Roses-meets-T. Rex a more palatable transition from the schlocky ‘80s hair bands of the day than the more scorched-earth approach Nirvana took with their grimy punk-metal. But, as with Cobain and Staley, Mother Love Bone leader Andrew Wood struggled with heroin addiction, and died of an overdose in March 1990, just days before the group’s debut album, “Apple,” was to be released.

“Nevermind,” though, was the album that truly burned down the fields of stagnating mainstream music.

“From a music collector’s perspective, ‘Nevermind’ was like a game-changer,” said Bay City music aficionado Gary Johnson. “It had the impact in the ‘90s of what ‘Meet the Beatles’ and the first Rolling Stones album, ‘England’s Newest Hit Makers,’ had in the ‘60s. It just seemed it changed everything. In the ‘80s, there was this emphasis on videos, synthesizers and drum machines, and ‘Nevermind’ kind of brought it back to the basics.

"And it still stands up as sounding great, 23 years later.”

Johnson added that he doesn’t think it’s hyperbolic to state Nirvana inadvertently created a musical revolution with the release of “Nevermind.”

“It changed the music landscape big time,” he said, again drawing parallels to the Beatles’ first big album. “It inspired the formation of bands and I think the same thing happened in the ‘90s as a result of ‘Nevermind.’ You saw the growth of a lot of young bands, of people picking up guitars again and a lot of cool music coming out of that.”

Johnson compared that reactionary response of the Seattle scene to ‘80s excess to the punk rock emergence in the late ‘70s, arriving as it did on the heels of the bloated pretentiousness of prog rock.

“It just seems every few years that needs to happen,” he said.

As to why Nirvana blew up before any of their Seattle peers, Johnson thinks it boils down to the simplest element — the songwriting.

“He had the right combination of rawness and being able to write those kinds of melodic songs that were very catchy and appealing,” he said. “He just had that knack of being able to put together those songs that just seemed to work on a number of levels. There were crunchy guitars, but yet they had that catchy factor. He kind of reminded me of John Lennon. He had some of those same qualities, I thought.”

Johnson also said he feels it’s apt to consider Cobain his generation’s version of a Lennon-like figure.

“Both experienced a lot of pain in their lives, and I think that came through in their music. The difference seems to be Lennon was better able to deal with pain than Cobain was.”

Johnson cited Nirvana’s 1993 performance on “MTV Unplugged” as an example of Cobain’s songwriting depth and evidence that the Lennon comparisons are justified.

“It just shows what he could do. It didn’t necessarily have to be the heavy grunge. He was just as effective in an acoustic setting.”

When Cobain died, I was 9 years old, so I missed the whole grunge revolution by a handful of years. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I discovered Nirvana, and through them the whole Seattle scene, years after it had dissipated. That scene ended up becoming the first musical zeitgeist that I made my own. Sure, I had bands here and there I obsessed over beforehand, but the Seattle thing was distinct, and it was mainly the sense of community among the bands coupled with their vastly different styles that hooked me.

There was the big four of Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, but the more obscure ones like Mudhoney, the Screaming Trees, Mother Love Bone, Love Battery, Green River and TAD all garnered my devotion as well. While my peers were listening to vapid pop-punk or abysmal post-grunge, I poured through this passé subgenre as if I’d found a time capsule left strictly for me.

Though I found Nirvana first, they ended up being my least favorite of the big four, Alice in Chains taking the top spot. Something about Staley’s feral and unflinching expression of his darkness really gelled with me and kept me coming back.

As of now, I honestly can’t recall the last time I listened to a Nirvana or Alice in Chains album. It’s been years, I’m sure.

Despite not hearing a song for however long, it is still present in a person, a component in the narrative of identity one self-authors.

Recognizing this, listening to those bands’ records is a nostalgic experience, and it’s impossible for me to assess them with objective criticism. It would be a fool’s errand, akin to trying to give objective analysis of a memory from your youth. Even if you could accomplish such a feat, what would be the point, as your concept of self is a sum of your memories and an accretion of sensory data, and the music of your formative years is an essential link in that chain of being.